The life and work of Robert Paul

Abstract:

Illustrates the effects and influences of "chosen" and "enforced" isolation on his work. Determines the extent of the influence that Piper and the Neo-Romantics had on Paul and illustrates mostly with anecdotes his life and life-style. He was no mean character. His life-long obsessions with art, alcohol and women were played out with a flair and dry humour which few emulated in his era. Robert Paul was remarkable as a painter in that against a backdrop of chosen and later enforced isolation, he made personal tracks into the Zimbabwean landscape defying eclecticism as he was too great a man to be narrowed by the parochial pitfalls of regionalism. In short, he was a living testimony to Waugh's maxim "Noli Illigitimes Carborundum" and history may one day show that the ground for which he stood (with its meagre five pigments) might brilliantly withstand the test of time.